Saturday, February 07, 2009

Escape from Dead Doll Island

As promised, I told you I would post a video of my little adventure....so here it is using my best Anderson Cooper impersonation...I even grayed my hair for the occasion.Part OneJourney to the Center of Dead Doll IslandFilmed in Rust-O-Rama

and nowPart TwoEscape From Dead Doll IslandakaThe Trees Have Eyes And They Are Made Of Plastic

I think I mentioned that I couldn't post all my photos since some of them are being used in my Mexico book but if you want to see more from this trip, take a peek at the photos that my travel partner Stacey took: http://arcangeloproductions.blogspot.com/

Some photos Stacey took were from her toy "Holga" camera, which creates very random unusual effects...this is a plastic blue, yellow and pink device that matched the color of our Mexican gondola.See what I mean...camera and boat match....as I said check out Stacey's blog...she'll be adding more entries soon...after all she took twenty million photographs. I only took 2 million.

17 comments:

Thank you for sharing Michael. I really enjoyed the trip to doll island! Loved the story, the dolls, the ride down the "river". Makes me want to get one of my doll heads out and grundge it up and maybe hang it out in the garage awhile! HA

Wow.. Well, that definitely is not the "island of misfit toys" that I remember from the movie. Quite amazing.. I have some interesting mixed emotions about it. Thank you for sharing that. I agree with some of the others, you could definitely have your own travel show. "Art and Travel with....."

What a perfect place for you - it must have been a bit like coming home for Christmas! The la Llorona is a legend I am so familiar with growing up in Santa Fe. As children we learned that she walked the arroyos at night searching for her dead child. We spend alot of time scaring ourselves with our imaginations - or was it JUST imagination?

Michael! You need to come to Detroit and visit the Heidelberg Project. Google it or look it up on Flickr. It will blow your mind! The dead doll island reminded me of Heidelberg street. The entire block is a living assemblage. Entire houses, a boat, (once a schoolbus), the trees to the very tops are giant assemblages. We would love to have you here!

You don't know me, but I'm your stalker. And I am afraid of dolls. NOw, I realize I'm not the only person afraid of dolls or who's had nightmares about dolls, or who actually dresses up like a doll and plays barbies with the girl up the street occasionally. But I shouldn't have mentioned that. Basically, what I wanted to say is that this video thing is challenging! And it's so COOL that you would go to the trouble of filming for us! And showing every doll in detail! The whole mob of them. How they are hanging and waiting. The stories written upon their little plastic, rubbery, puffy extremities and everything. I mean, thanks. Thanks. Yes, that's what I mean to say.

I thought that was going to be kind of funny in a weird way but instead I feel really sad. That must be the power of this art, if you call it that. You called it "somber," and I agree. This film may change the way I approach my demented toys when we work on this in August. I am going to watch it one more time before the class in order to be in the proper mood.

The other thing is I know I would like to visit this island with my camera. I cannot begin to image the images that I could make.

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About Me

Michael deMeng is an assemblage artist from Vancouver, Canada who exhibits throughout the United States. As an educator, he has been actively involved with VSA Montana, providing art education and encouraging participation in the arts to people with disabilities. Through these activities, as well as his artwork, deMeng fosters community awareness, and offers creative methods to explore the human experience.

In his art, he addresses issues of transformation. Discarded materials find new and unexpected uses in his work; they are reassembled and conjoined with unlikely components, a form of rebirth from the ashes into new life and new meaning.

These assemblages are metaphors for the evolutions and revolutions of existence: from life to death to rebirth, from new to old to renewed, from construction to destruction to reconstruction. These forms are examinations of the world in perpetual flux, where meaning and function are ever-changing.